Retrogradation
by Art Is The Weapon
Summary: "Even if they didn't show it, even if their parents seemed to play favourites, they all loved Cisco. Which is why it was so hard for them all to watch him slowly lose his mind. " Dante watches his younger brother slowly fade, and there seems to be very little he can do about it. AU, post s2 speculative fic.


_**Author's Note:** So I haven't written any fics (or at least finished any worth posting) in like six years, but wow if the Flash season finale didn't suddenly inspire this random plot bunny. I'm pretty sure that quite a few people have adopted the 'Cisco still gets vibes and people think he's insane because of it' line of thought for what may happen in S3, but it's literally been all I could think about since the finale aired. Hence, this. Not sure how I ended up writing from Dante's perspective, but I actually like Cisco and Dante's relationship a lot. Apologies if anyone is offended by how the Ramon family deals with mental health problems but I'm sure that adverse effects of metahuman powers isn't really their wheelhouse. (Or mine, for that matter). Enjoy my first attempt at writing for the Flash fandom, and I have no idea how it got this long…!_

* * *

 **Retrogradation**

Dante Ramon would be the first one to say that his brother was weird.

But that didn't mean other people could.

Dante had grown up hearing more comments about his brother than he had liked. People would openly speculate how a popular guy like Dante could possibly be related to someone as geeky as his younger brother, or how Cisco brought most of his problems on himself by acting like sure a smartass all the time. Even the biggest nerds in their high school hadn't hung around Cisco, for fear that it would make them even more unpopular by mere association.

Though he rarely showed it, Dante loved his brother. He was actually proud of how driven and passionate Cisco was, even though their parents didn't seem to be. They doted on Dante, even though he was a loser who worked a job that was only remotely related to the musical field, because he had been too afraid to chase down his own dream. Maybe it was because his parents had such grand notions about Dante, and hardly paid attention to Cisco. Or maybe it was just because their parents didn't understand science so Cisco's achievements were beyond them.

Sometimes Dante wondered what it would have been like had Armando never died. It was a taboo subject in their family, and his name hadn't been spoken aloud in the house in years. Cisco had been too young to remember Armando, but Dante had vague memories of the times there had been three Ramon brothers. Before one of them just suddenly vanished from their lives. Tragedies either brought families together or tore them apart and for the Ramon family, it had been the latter.

But even if they didn't show it, even if their parents seemed to play favourites, they all loved Cisco.

Which is why it was so hard for them all to watch him slowly lose his mind.

The night the particle accelerator completely failed seemed to be the root of Cisco's decline in health. When Dante had finally gotten a hold of Cisco on the phone that night, after hours of panic and his parents trying the same (and this couldn't be happening, they couldn't be losing another son, why hadn't they appreciated him more _)_ , but when Dante spoke to his brother, Cisco seemed incredibly shaken and just kept repeating that Ronnie was dead. None of them knew who Ronnie was, but figured he was a close friend if Cisco couldn't stop saying it. Dante offered to go pick up Cisco, but Cisco insisted that he needed to stay and make sure Caitlin was okay because well, Ronnie _just_ _died_.

The following day Dante swung by Cisco's apartment, where he was clearly trying to keep himself busy, as there were several gadgets half taken apart and reassembled. Dante remembered a time when they were young and a bored Cisco took apart their toaster and reassembled it in one afternoon. The toaster had never worked better since.

Dante did try to talk to his brother but it was difficult. They weren't close and Cisco's friend had just died and well, his fledgling career had hit a halt. Cisco told him that it didn't look like Star Labs would ever recover from this and that anyone who worked on the accelerator would probably be blacklisted by other companies, the failure was that spectacular.

He should have kept more of an eye on him afterwards. His parents told Dante that Cisco was always a bit of a recluse (though it had never been by his own choice, Dante wanted to counter with, but it didn't seem like his parents knew Cisco as well as they thought they did). Dante dropped by every once in a while, sure, every few weeks, and the decline was subtle because it was months before he noticed something was truly wrong.

About six months after the explosion, Dante noticed that Cisco's apartment was looking barer than usual, his fridge was empty and though it looked lived in, it just wasn't as furnished as it once had been. It took Cisco awhile to admit that he wasn't working very regularly, and Dante could have kicked himself for not knowing this sooner because Cisco _told_ him months ago that plenty of Star Labs employees had been blacklisted and as the mechanical engineer, Cisco's name was one of the blacklisted ones. It took the better part of a week, but Dante managed to convince Cisco that moving back to the family home would probably be for the best.

Even once he had Cisco at home, Dante _still_ didn't see the warning signs.

It was slow to start, admittedly. Cisco didn't get out much and spent most of his time tinkering in his room. After a while, he would only come out for food and Dante noticed his eyes were ringed with shadows, like he hadn't been sleeping that well. It wasn't until Cisco fell asleep on the couch one evening while they were watching _Back to the Future_ (Cisco loved that dumb movie, and Dante needed to do something that would get that goofy grin on his brother's face again), and woke up clutching his chest and heaving gasping breaths that Dante realised that Cisco hadn't slept properly in months.

He tried to broach the topic with Cisco, but Cisco would only admit that he was having nightmares and wouldn't elaborate further. But the nightmares got worse, Dante could tell, because their rooms were adjoining, and some nights Dante would lay awake and listen to his baby brother's muffled shouts and subsequent sobbing once he woke from a dream.

Things got worse when they seemed to happen during the day. Since Cisco was hardly sleeping, he tended to space out during the day. But then he started having these… episodes. Dante would be in the middle of a conversation with Cisco when Cisco would suddenly stare off into space, and more often than not, suffer a small panic attack afterwards that Dante would do his best to calm him down from. After a while the panic attacks tapered off, but the spacing out continued. Though he hardly left the house as it was, Dante had forbidden Cisco from driving because he was terrified that Cisco would clock out one day while driving through an intersection. The prospect of something like that happening was terrifying.

By far the most frightening thing were the seizures. They'd only happened on a handful of occasions, but were still completely terrifying to witness. The first time it had happened, Dante was at work and his mother called him in full on panic to tell him that Cisco had had some sort of seizure and that she was taking him to the hospital because enough was enough. Dante met them at the hospital, where they were seen by a very friendly doctor, a broad middle aged man who Cisco stared at with wide eye confusion while being treated. Cisco had a few of his spacing out moments – that the doctor dubbed an absence seizure – and out of nowhere, Cisco asked the doctor how someone called Barry was.

The doctor, seemed to take this in his stride however and said Barry was doing well, thank you very much, he was working with the CCPD as a CSI and was very passionate about his work and did he know Barry from school? Cisco just shook his head in confusion. Dante was equally confused, he had never heard of Cisco having many friends, and Barry was certainly a new name he had never heard before. Cisco had numerous tests run on him, but they couldn't determine any physical cause for the seizures. So after they had run every diagnostic test possible, Dr. Allen discharged Cisco.

Things after that got even more frightening. Dante had thought that the various seizures and nightmares were one thing, but after a while Cisco became far more skittish and jumpy. He would see a random cop on the street and stop himself in his tracks from greeting him. When they went to Jitters for coffee, Cisco would see a certain barista and act like a kicked puppy when she spoke to him. He would pass random strangers in the supermarket and insist on leaving, that he wasn't safe there, that nobody was and they needed to go _five minutes ago_.

(Sometimes his instincts seemed almost preternatural, Dante thought, and though there was a huge swell in numbers of these people with incredible powers, Dante couldn't help but think that walking nightmares and seizures weren't exactly indicative of metahuman abilities. Still it was eerie to read about a metahuman attack that had happened not fifteen minutes after they'd left somewhere)

Even when their parents decided that Cisco should stay home for his own sake, Cisco would see a news report and freak out after seeing some general on the news, or any of the metahuman reports. And yet he seemed to thrive on them at the same time, as if he had some sort of connection to it he couldn't explain.

When things had gotten to this stage however, Dante and his parents knew that they were eventually going to have to do something, because it was getting beyond them, but at the same time they felt like they needed to soldier on and look after Cisco as best they could because turning him over to professional help seemed like giving up on him in a way. So they struggled on, never quite sure if they were making the right choice or not. The days when Cisco had suffered through the worst of his high school bullies seemed like cake walk compared to how things were now.

Ultimately, Cisco took the decision out of their hands. He sat Dante and their parents down one day, and looking at how haggard and broken his little brother had become in the space of two years, Dante couldn't help but wonder how they had let it get this far.

"I know that you guys have noticed I haven't…. been the same since the particle accelerator exploded. And I think we know what the next step is. So I think it's time that I got committed."

Their parents two years ago never would have even considered such a possibility, to do so would be to admitting that something was broken within their family, something that had broken when Armando died and that they couldn't admit to then, but had to face now.

So they all agreed it was for the best, and though the cover story was that Cisco had moved to Coast City to work in some science lab, he was actually committed to the Belle Reve Sanitarium. Cisco, someone who had once been so trusting, had insisted that this was for his own safety and that if anyone came looking for him, that they under no circumstances learn where he actually was. When Dante tried to argue the point, Cisco grabbed his shirt (weakly, Cisco hadn't been eating or sleeping regularly in months) and insisted that this was for the best, and that he especially not tell Harrison Wells on the off chance that he came searching for him. Dante had no idea why Cisco was so worried about this, but agreed to it none the less.

Cisco had more conditions with where he was committed of course. Because of his deep seeded paranoia, Dante and their parents had to visit sporadically, with no pattern to their visit.

"If you come every Sunday, they'll be on to you." Cisco told Dante with a determined expression. "They can't know I'm here."

Their parents couldn't handle it within a few visits. It was too hard, watching someone who had once been so bright to diminish so much, to someone who was afraid of his own shadow and who would space out at least twice during an hour visit.

Dante once asked Cisco what it was he saw when he seemed to drift off. Well, he asked several times, but he only got an answer once.

"Things that have never happened," was the curt reply. When Dante asked him to be specific, Cisco promised to tell him whatever his next… daydream? Delusion? Whatever it could be called entailed. About ten minutes later, Cisco's eyes glazed over, and for the first time he looked mostly stunned, rather than as shaken as usual.

"Well?" Dante asked.

Cisco had to stifle a laugh. "Giant man shark."

"….excuse me?" Dante asked. Some crazy things had happened in the world since the particle accelerator had exploded but Dante was pretty sure he would notice a giant man shark.

"A man who was transformed into a shark. He calls himself King Shark. And he wears pants."

Dante decided after that maybe he was better off not asking Cisco to elaborate in future.

As requested, Dante staggered out his visits as best as he could around his work schedule. He tended to go at least once a fortnight, sometimes more. And while Dante had thought that Cisco would get better in Belle Reve, every time that he saw him he seemed to be more agitated.

"I don't understand why this happened to me." Cisco confided in him during a particularly difficult visit. "I thought it would get better but it's like the more time passes the worse it gets. I see people I don't know hurting people I used to be close with, people I loved betraying me, and I've seen myself die at least three times. Why won't it stop?"

Dante didn't know what to say. Cisco was trembling, curled in on himself, and Dante had no idea how to comfort his little brother. So he reached out his hand, slowly, and covered Cisco's with it, because he knew his words would only be empty promises.

x-x-x-x

The Ramons didn't get visitors that much anymore. People thought their family was cursed. Three sons, one killed at an early age by a hit and run driver, one still living at home working a menial job, and one that played a part in destroying their city and unleashing dangerous metahumans that police couldn't seem to control.

So one evening Dante was surprised when the doorbell rang. His parents were out so it was just Dante home, and he was mentally preparing himself for a visit to Belle Reve the following day. He hadn't been home from work long and was debating between getting takeout and fixing himself something from the kitchen.

Dante didn't recognise the young man at the door. The young man had the briefest moment of recognition in his eyes when he saw Dante, but it was difficult to see through all the nerves.

"I'm looking for Cisco Ramon?"

Dante began to internally panic when the young man asked this; it seemed Cisco's paranoia had rubbed off on him. He tried to act as calm as possible. "Who's asking?"

"My name is Barry Allen… we… I…" he hesitated, and stumbled over his words.

Allen… Barry… "Your dad is a doctor." Dante stated.

Barry looked surprised, and blinked in confusion.

"Yeah. He's a doctor, works in the hospital. How did you know that?"

Dante hesitated, trying to figure out how much he could say. "Met him once. He seemed quite nice."

Barry nodded, and then determination took over his features once again. "Look, I need to talk to Cisco, it's urgent –"

"Cisco doesn't live here anymore."

"Oh, well this was his last known address…."

That made Dante even more suspicious of this Barry Allen character. 'Last known address' didn't scream 'we used to casually hang out'. More like 'I'm tracking down somebody in a creepy manner'.

"Well he decided he'd had enough of Central City after what happened with the particle accelerator, so he moved to Coast City for a fresh start. Works in some science firm or other. We don't keep in touch much." Dante lied, as he leaned against the door frame, trying to go for nonchalance.

Barry looked a bit distressed at the news. "Oh… I was. Oh."

Dante shook his head, "To be honest I've been wondering why we're all hanging around Central City for, this metahuman situation is getting pretty out of hand."

Barry fidgeted a bit before replying. "It would be a lot easier to take care of it, if there was a metahuman that could say, see other metahumans and track them. Would make things a lot easier."

Dante frowned at that pointed comment, wondering what Barry was implying.

"Listen, if you see Cisco or next time you talk to him, could you give him a message for me?"

Dante was a bit hesitant, but figured that he could at least see what it was. He nodded. Barry mulled in thought before coming to a decision.

"Tell him Barry said 'I have been and always shall be your friend'," he said, complete with a hand gesture Dante vaguely knew from one of those series Cisco was always harping on about. "If he reacts to that…. Tell him I wanted to remind him that the universe wants us to be bros. Just…. Please. I need to talk to Cisco. He's the only person I know that can fix this. Help _me_ fix this."

Cisco wasn't in a state to fix anything, but Dante couldn't let that slip without revealing where he was. "Okay."

Barry took out a notepad and wrote down a name and a contact number. "Just in case." He turned to leave, before pausing and saying "thanks, Dante."

It wasn't until Dante was watching the game and digging into his pizza an hour or so later, when he realised that at no point did he tell Barry Allen his name.

x-x-x-x

Dante debated for most of the hour drive to Belle Reve whether to pass on Barry Allen's message or not. He still hadn't decided by the time he was sitting with his brother in the visitor's room. Dante doesn't know how every time he saw his brother he somehow managed to look worse, but the tremors in his hands that had appeared a few visits ago were getting more pronounced and the dark rings under his eyes a violent shade of purple.

Cisco tried to make conversation as best as he could and he stared off to space far more in this conversation for some reason, burying his face in his hands after it happened for the fifth time.

(Of course Dante is keeping count.)

Dante wasn't sure if he should go through with this, if passing on this message will make things worse, but the way things were going, Cisco couldn't get any worse as it was. So he decided to take a chance.

"Someone came looking for you last night."

All the colour drained from Cisco's face, and he began to withdraw. Dante decided to rip the Band-Aid off as quickly as possible.

"I didn't tell him you were here, don't worry. But he wanted me to pass on a message."

Cisco looked slightly reassured, but not much. "What was the message?"

Feeling a bit dumb, Dante hesitated before imitating the gesture. "I have been and shall always be your friend."

Cisco looked up at this stunned, his eyes going wide and for the first time in, well, years, Dante could see something resembling hope in them. "Did he say anything else?"

"Yes. And I quote, 'the universe wants us to be bros'." Dante could see Cisco start to stare off to space and for some reason, this unnerved him even more. After coming out of it, he stared at Dante and said, "Barry." It wasn't a question. This guy that Dante had never met before last night - clearly there was more than Dante knew.

"He was looking for you… he seemed adamant, said it was important."

Cisco nodded feverishly. "He might know… he might remember. He doesn't know I'm here?"

Dante shook his head. "I told him you were in Coast City like you said, but he gave me his number. Do you want him to know where you really are?"

Cisco hesitated, then nodded. "Pass on a message for me first and see how he reacts."

Dante sighed, hoping he wouldn't have to play messenger for too long more. "Okay, what's the message?"

"'May the speed force be with you'. If that seems familiar to him, then it's okay to tell him where I am. And also it's okay to let him know I am very pissed with whatever he did. Because if he remembers too, then clearly he did something."

"He wants to see you. Are you sure you're okay with that?" Cisco hadn't seen anyone but Dante since their parents stopped visiting.

"If he remembers. And don't forget: pissed."

So Dante called the number Barry Allen had given him on the drive home, and asked the younger man to meet him at the house later that night, because he had a message for him from Cisco.

When Barry called, Dante dragged him upstairs to avoid questions from his parents and brought Barry into Cisco's room. His parents didn't pass any comment. They didn't say much these days anyway.

Dante had rarely been in Cisco's room since he'd been home, and even less when he was taken to Belle Reve. It was too painful, too much of a reminder of the cheery younger brother he used to know. Before everything over the last, god two and a half years?

Barry frowned at the room. He seemed quite bright, so the fact that all of Cisco's things were clearly here would have made him suspicious when Cisco was supposedly in Coast City.

"On the phone, you said Cisco had a message for me?" He said once he had recovered.

Dante nodded. "He said, 'may the speedforce be with you'."

Barry collapsed onto Cisco's bed in relief. "He remembers."

"Remembers what?" Dante asked in confusion. Cisco had also been hoping that Barry would remember something.

"It's... Complicated. Do you think you could give me Cisco's address in Coast City?"

Dante sized up Barry Allen one last time before coming to a decision. "I lied before. Cisco isn't in Coast City."

Barry looked a little stricken by this, then seemed to come to his senses as he remembered that Dante had delivered his message to him which meant he was still alive. Dante's gut twisted when he thought Barry had assumed Cisco was dead. "Then, where is he?"

Dante's mouth was tight as he answered. "Belle Reve Sanitarium."

For whatever reason, Dante could see guilt completely wash over Barry's features. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and running his hands through his hair. When he finally recovered he asked. "Has... He been there long?"

Dante tilted his head. "A couple of months. He voluntarily committed himself. He's been... Well he hasn't been himself since that stupid thing at Star Labs."

Dante sank down on the bed beside Barry, clasping his hands together in his lap. They sat together side by side, looking around the room. The science fair trophies, the diplomas, the dog-eared books spilling out from the shelf. All these things reminders of a Cisco that was being lost more and more each day. They sat in silence a while before Barry broke the silence.

"Do you... Do you think I could see him?"

The question sounded almost childlike. "Yeah. He said that would be okay. Though he also told me to warn you that he was pissed."

Barry grimaced at that, Dante winced in sympathy. "Do... Do you want me to go with you?"

Barry slowly stood up, shaking his head. "No. This is something I need to do myself. I need to fix this. Everything. I need to fix it."

And with that the young man rushed out, before Dante could say anymore.

x-x-x-x

Dante never learned what Barry meant by fixing it.

Dante never noticed that he woke up one day and the world around him had changed.

Dante remembered being held hostage, fighting for his brother and frostbitten fingers.

Dante didn't remember rushing to the hospital upon hearing his brother had a seizure for the first time.

Dante remembered him and his brother being attacked by some psycho wearing his face.

Dante didn't remember those hour long drives, hoping his brother hadn't deteriorated any further.

Dante remembered the day he and his brother finally decided to reconnect, and Cisco confiding his metahuman powers to him.

Dante didn't remember an entire timeline where he did everything he could to help his brother. That timeline was lost to him, a memory he would never get back.

But that timeline would never be lost to his brother.

* * *

 _Hope you enjoyed and review if you did, feedback is always appreciated!_


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